Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.

everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure

But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.